Backfired Brilliance
by Swyfte
Summary: It was great. It was brilliant. It was all his idea. Yet ultimately, it failed. And it ruined him.


It was his idea. It was brilliant; it was beneficial. But ultimately, it backfired. It backfired on him, its very creator.

They called him Bluefrost. He wasn't a very young cat, nor was he old enough to be admitted into the ranks of the senior warriors. He was, in short, an extra-ordinary warrior. Until he thought up his grand idea.

…

It was a damp, grey morning that Bluefrost chose to visit his kits. It was Leaffall, and prey hadn't been running too good lately, so the tom had decided to duck into the nursery to see Jaykit and Creekkit.

A few minutes won't do anyone any harm, he thought to himself, trotting over to blackened stump that was their den, a plump frog dangling from his jaws. The fresh-kill pile was meagre at best, but the Warrior Code did say that elders, queens and kits should eat first.

The blue-grey warrior crawled into the nursery, mumbling a greeting around the slimy amphibian in his mouth. Petalfoot, curled in a golden tabby heap in her nest, looked up at him and yawned.

"Bluefrost," she purred, eyelids fluttering with a series of rapid blinks. "Is that for us?"

At the sound of her soft voice, their two kits stirred. Perhaps it was the scent of food that prompted their wakening, or their parents' quiet conversation, but either way the two little toms were on their paws and bouncing around Bluefrost's feet in a matter of seconds.

"Frog! Frog! Frog!" they chorused, until he finally dropped the limp prey at their paws. Bluefrost sat by his mate until they'd finished eating, then tussled with the kits for a bit.

"You'll be apprentices in no time!" he told them, grinning as they sat triumphantly on his head.

"Yeah, but that's three moons away, Bluefrost!" Creekkit complained, tumbling off the blue-grey tom's head. He landed with a small thump in front of his father's nose.

It was then his idea, spontaneously, struck.

That's three moons away.

Three moons away.

Three moons.

He froze for a moment, letting what he considered the brilliance of it sink in. Then he gently tipped Jaykit off his head and pressed a lick between Petalfoot's ears.

"I'll be back soon," Bluefrost promised as he crouched to exit the small den. But he wasn't going hunting- his previous plan. Instead he headed to Pinestar's den. Bluefrost was not exactly an influential warrior, but with his new idea, he hoped to change that.

"Pinestar?" he called, cautiously creeping into the shade of his den. The old brown tom was sprawled in his moss-and-feathers nest, a thin trail of saliva staining the dry plant. He paid no attention to the warrior and continued to snore with deep, rattling breaths.

"Uh, Pinestar?" he repeated.

Finally the tabby cracked open one bleary green eye. "What's it now, young Bluesnap?" he mumbled, heaving himself to his paws with a loud pop of old protesting joints.

"It's Bluefrost, but I've had an idea, sir."

The sleepy leader collapsed back onto his nest with a wide yawn. "Bluefrost, of course. An idea, you say?"

"It's a marvelous idea, Pinestar. What if…" Here he paused for dramatic effect, and to let the old tom rub the edges of his crusty eyes with one paw. "What if we let kits become apprentices at three moons instead of six?"

Pinestar didn't respond; he was afraid he'd fallen asleep, so he continued to talk.

"Well, I mean, look at the idea. It's so beneficial- flawless, really. The sooner we start training kits, the sooner we get warriors, which strengthens the Clan. Having kits being kits for the extra three moons simply becomes a dead weight to the Clan-"

"Alright, alright," Pinestar muttered. "I see your point there, Bluewhat'sit. Whatever you say."

With the distinct feeling he was being dismissed, Bluefrost slunk out of the den without bothering to correct his slightly senile and rather forgetful leader.

Suffice to say he was surprised when Pinestar announced the idea the following day at the Clan meeting. The Clan, at first, was doubtful. But with his deputy Finchspots' help, he managed to convince a portion of the Clan, and that was enough for him, it seemed.

"And now," Pinestar announced grandly. "We will hold an apprentice ceremony. Fernkit, Thornkit, Creekkit and Jaykit, will you step forwards?"

He went on to rename them Fernpaw, Thornpaw, Creekpaw and Jaypaw. By that time, the old tom claimed he was too tired to continue and leapt off the High Branch to nap in his den. Finchspots grudgingly continued the ceremony, a stubborn frown fixed on her pretty tabby face. (Some cats speculated that Pinestar had given her the deputyship merely because of her looks, not her skills and talents.)

"And Thornpaw will be mentored by Bluefrost. We admire his intelligence and loyalty," she finished, already leaping off the tree. She darted into Pinestar's den and promptly interrupted his nap with an angry hiss that half the Clan heard.

Bluefrost was too happy, however, to do anything more than bump noses with fluffy-furred Thornpaw. He was a small russet tom,only a few days older than Bluefrost's own kits.

"Can we go training? Can we hunt? We can see the territory- ooh, can we fight?"

Bluefrost purred at the young tom.

"Battle practice sounds good to me," he agreed. "You're never too young to learn a thing or two."

He started to lead his apprentice out of camp, listening to the young tom chatter.

If he learns as fast as he talks, Bluefrost mused, watching an ear while he smiled.

"This path leads to our training area," he told Thornpaw, leaping onto the dry creekbed and interrupting the spiel about a bad mouse he at once.

"It's all sandy!" Thornpaw protested, wrinkling his nose. He followed his mentor anyway, but the disdain didn't leave his eyes. With every step, he shook each paw to get rid of the sand they had acquired.

"And here we are!" Bluefrost announced, trotting onto the wide expanse of the dried pond bed.

Thornpaw's mouth gaped open. "It's covered in sand!" he gasped, glancing at his pelt as if he envisioned grooming hundreds of tiny grains out later that night.

"It's good for practicing in, because it's nice and soft to fall on. I think you'd rather have sand in your fur than a broken bone, huh?"

Thornpaw's expression didn't quite agree, but he nodded anyway. "What are we gonna do first?"

Bluefrost thought for a moment, sitting down on the sand and curling his thick tail around his paws.

"We won't do anything too hard," he said eventually. Thornpaw was his first apprentice; the blue-grey warrior wanted to do everything right. "But how about the front-paw strike? It's a good offensive but it doesn't require much skill."

He purred quietly as Thornpaw nodded eagerly.

"Okay. This move is really simple but I can't count how many times I've used it in battle," he explained. It was probably because he didn't have a very good memory, but Thornpaw didn't need to know that aspect.

He started demonstrating the slowly on Thornpaw, bringing his paw down softly on the russet tom's nose with his claws sheathed.

"In a battle, you need to have your claws unsheathed so you can rake it down their muzzle. Ideally, you want them to get blood in their eyes so they can't see, which gives you a massive advantage. So are you ready to practice it on me?"

Hardly daring to breath, Thornpaw nodded again. The two toms backed away from each other, sinking into crouches and staring into each other's eyes. With a kittish yowl the apprentice launched himself into the air. He fell short, landing sprawled in the dust at Bluefrost's paws, but the tom waited patiently for him to get up. Thornpaw lurched to his paws and reared onto his hind legs so he could reach the top of Bluefrost's head.

And then, without hesitation, the little apprentice plunged his claws into Bluefrost's narrowed eye. He fell back screeching, feeling Thornpaw's claws yanked out abruptly, heard his horrified squeal. Felt no pain, for a blissful moment, until the building pressure in his skull burst into fragments of agony.

He yowled again, felt liquid seep into the fur of his cheek, felt a horrible certainty that he had been blinded. He heard Thornpaw calling, "Help, help!" in a thin, strangled voice.

Through his good eye, he saw Poppyleg hurry into the clearing, then dart away, howling for the medicine cat. Presently, more cats spilled into the Training Area, and someone closed their teeth around his scruff. Thornpaw had gone.

In a most unmasculine way, the blue-grey tom closed his single undamaged eye and fainted.

...

He woke in the shade of the medicine den. The sharp reek of herbs clung to his fur and a patch of something slimy was plastered over his eye.

"Who- what happened?" Bluefrost croaked. His remaining eye found a shadow at the back of the den, blurred and indistinct. The shadow turned its dark face towards him and barked out a laugh.

"Your grand idea? It backfired on you. Did you even bother to tell the poor kit never to use his claws in a training session?"

Bluefrost paused for a moment, silently indignant. His idea was flawless! Pinestar had agreed to it- Pinestar, the bumbling, senile old fool who had no right to lead the Clan in such a way.

"There's a reason kits are apprenticed at six moons. There's a reason it's in the Warrior Code." The shadow stepped out of the shade and solidified into the medicine cat, Blackleaf.

"And you, my friend, broke the Code. No wonder StarClan decided to punish you and teach the Clan a lesson," she mewed, shoving a small pile of poppy seeds at him.

"Eat," she instructed. He did.

Even as he slept, he carried the taint of his shame, burdened with the failed idea that he had once, in a sudden moment of inspiration, thought brilliant.

Heh. Silly Bluefrost. I do not like you. For those who don't know, this is my fourth ImagineClan challenge! I got it a while ago and started writing it last night,


End file.
